Page Flip: Big Nate Strikes Again

Hey guys, it’s Sam debuting with my new segment for book reviews–Page Flip! I–Oh, gee. Me oh my. Ba humbug. Big Nate Strikes Again has totally changed my view for Lincoln Peirce’s hit series. And I’m not playing funny. This is the worst book I’ve ever read, besides those epic fails from Goosebumps. Is it worth the read? Heck no. Is it that bad? Let’s find out.

Big Nate Strikes Again is Lincoln Peirce’s second novel in his hit book series from his comic strip, Big Nate. It lunged into bookstores last year, and people have been loving it ever since, like the first novel, Big Nate In a Class By Himself. But when I read it, I never loved it back. First of all, $13.00? That’s a ripoff! But, what the heck, it’s Big Nate, right? Of all the books I’ve read, I just wanted this to be good, darn it! Why does my life suck so bad?

Think of this book like this: Take a bad script, make it worse, then turn it into a bad Big Nate script. Almost every stage of the book was drowned out horribly inconsistently. Let’s start with the humor of this book. Two words: plain LAZY. Lacking heart, inspiration, and innovation. Probably the most innovative thing in this book was watching Randy Betancourt get a bloody nose. But that’s just underestimation. Everything was broken. The script, broken. The humor, broken. The perspective, broken!

Next, we’ll stop by the actual script or the perspective of that script. It brings you down from the amount of awkwardness the script allows to have, enough to give you a migraine. I got so mad at this book, I wanted to rip the pages into pieces, go to Lincoln Peirce himself, grab him by the ear, and yell in it, “WHY DID YOU MAKE YOUR BOOK SUCK?!?!” It’s like Lincoln chose his script with the roll of a dice, and that’s not a good thing AT ALL. It’s like Lincoln didn’t give a darn. He just made sure he got all the characters, threw out the innovative parts, added in some stuff, made it inconsistent, and slapped it into a cover and gave us the bare minimum.

We’ll stop by the picturing next. Just like novel one; splendid, charming, and eye-catching. It might be the only thing that bumped the book upwards instead of downwards. Nate’s sketches are still pretty laughable, but they aren’t hilarious enough to lift the bar up to a good score. Why? Because it was BROKEN!…sort of.

Here is something that’s really ugly. People were actually liking this book. Giving it favorable reviews. On Google Books, it got a 4 stars out of 5, summing up all the reviews. We’re talking 3 stars out of 5, 4 stars, even 5 STARS!!! No one even BOTHERED to give it ONE star! Dirty lies! And I couldn’t scroll down a Goodreads.com page without seeing a bazillion 4-star and 5-star ratings! NOW THAT IS JUST DISGUSTING! Like my dad, I will hate a lie when I hear one. And now that you lie now, that makes me sick. Really sick, after eating a whole 10-nugget meal from Wendy’s.

Sure, some of the little “games” in there were interesting, but they were as mind-numbing as algebra. Especially a maze that will take you YEARS to finish, just to get Ben Franklin to his time machine so he can hit the 1700s again! Another was a lame decoding method that couldn’t just TELL YOU THE ANSWERS ahead of time, before you stretch your brain like it’s a chunk of Play-Doh! And as we all know, when you stretch a chunk of Play-Doh too far…it BREAKS APART.

The final verdict to this is our first TWO out of 10 (terrible)! I would recommend Big Nate In a Class By Himself over this junkyard. Even if it wasn’t the perfect comic novel. Hopefully, Lincoln can try again in his third book, which is already in production, due to release this August. Maybe he’ll take back the innovation and get serious this time.

Here are the emblems Big Nate Strikes Again deserves!

Epic Fail – When you don’t succeed at first, never try again. The script that makes you sigh, the bonuses that make you blush, and the fails that deserve face-palms are only described as recipients of this emblem.

Broken – When you shudder walking by a book, you know it’s Broken. After hours of reading, you still are unable to wrap your mind around what’s happening and when it’s happening. Maybe more thorough descriptions would rekindle the mishap.

Total Ripoff – Was it a sick joke? Was it all for laughs? When you spend 20 dollars on a book that you later realize wasn’t worth the overspend, you feel like it’s a rotten prank that you just can’t undo…besides the deadly refund. Maybe next time you’ll approach with a little more caution.

Disappointing – Plenty of books out there refuse to stoop to their potential. Books with the potential that falls rather short earns this nose-thumbing demerit for their troubles.

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Need I say more? Well, here in Michigan, it’s getting pretty late, so I’m Sam, and I’ll see you next time on Page Flip, AND Sammwak!